Poop, scoop and hang: The doo-doos and don’ts of dealing with your dog’s droppings

Often, they are simply tossed onto the ground, but some people go to the trouble of knotting them up and hooking them to various objects along their path. The bright, colourful bags are left decorating posts, fences and branches, like deranged Christmas tree ornaments

Kathryn Markle walks up to a small, knotted, black plastic bag looped around a fence post, grabs it and says with a sigh, “I wish people wouldn’t do that.”

The bag contains dog poop, and Ms. Markle, like many others out walking their dogs on the off-leash trail in Sherwood Park, is exasperated by similar odorous bags hanging around on trails and in parks.

Several dog walkers on the trail, just north of Bayview and Eglinton avenues, indicate that while they have seen used bags left in parks for years, they have been noticing more of them lately.

GO TO OUR GRAPHIC: Doggy Doo Dilemma

Often, they are simply tossed onto the ground, but some people go to the trouble of knotting them up and hooking them to various objects along their path, making them more visible than if they were just left on the ground. The bright, colourful bags are left decorating posts, fences and branches, like deranged Christmas tree ornaments.

“I think it’s very selfish and irresponsible for people to leave them,” says Ms. Markle.

A one-hour stroll through the park reveals five such hanging adornments, not to mention several on the ground.

Dog walkers have reported sightings in every other park they visit, including Trinity Bellwoods, High Park and Cherry Beach, as well as King City and parks in the York Region, Keswick and Newmarket.

“Would you hang your kid’s dirty diaper on a shrub in your backyard?” asks Janice Palmer, a retired biology teacher and volunteer who plants native trees and shrubs in Sherwood Park. “It’s crap, for God’s sake, and it’s plastic in a natural area. It’s unsanitary, it’s unsightly and it’s disrespectful of other park users and it’s disrespectful of nature.”

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There are no statistics on how often this happens and the City of Toronto has not received any complaints, but Bruce Hawkins, a spokesman for the Municipal Licensing and Standards division said city staff have “occasionally found bags of animal feces” in areas with a high dog population.

But why bother scooping in the first place? A professional dog walker who wanted to remain anonymous admitted to leaving the bags hanging in visible places so she doesn’t have to walk with them, and so she can pick them up on her way out of the park. But, she adds, some dog owners get distracted and forget to collect their bags when they’re leaving.

Some dog owners speculate that it’s easy for the bags to slip out of people’s hands without them realizing it.

Others say there aren’t enough garbage cans into which the bags can be thrown.

“But it’s no excuse,” says dog owner Maria Cello. “Carry it home or to your car.”

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Adds Kristi Garbutt: “Maybe some people think there’s a poop fairy that comes along and takes it.”

Ms. Palmer provides a more sinister reason. Mimicking the thoughts of a fictional dog owner, she says, “‘I don’t wanna pick up after my pet. You’re making me pick it up. So, I’m picking it up, but I’m going to make you look at it.’ In other words, I think it’s an act of rebellion.”

There are a few who leave parcels of poop to purposefully perturb people. Brad Flanders, a systems analyst in Pittsburgh, Pa., who goes by the twitter handle Pennsylvania Smooth, confesses to tossing them into the backs of pickup trucks belonging to gas workers with Texas and Arkansas license plates.

“Lots of fraking [sic] going on and it annoys me so I leave them gifts,” Mr. Flanders said on Twitter.

Toronto’s stoop-and-scoop bylaw was introduced in 1985 to deal with droppings that were becoming a blight on the urban landscape. The fine then was $20. Today, it is $365.

Since 2007, the City has been encouraging people to carry their waste home to their green bins, instead of throwing them in garbage receptacles in parks, as part of its waste diversion project.

The bylaw on dog feces doesn’t stop at poop-and-scoop. It states that dog walkers must “dispose of it in a sanitary manner in a receptacle for litter or in some other suitable container.”

A hollow tree stump, says Carol Cormier, manager of Parks Standards and Innovation with the City of Toronto, is not considered a suitable container.

Kate Ferguson, owner of the dog-walking business Unleashed in the City, believes in taking the philosophy behind the bylaw one step further.

‘Maybe some people think there’s a poop fairy that comes along and takes it’

She would like to see other dog lovers do what she does, pick up what’s left behind by others and inform their owners about the health of their dogs based on the quality of the stools.

That approach may be a hard sell for those who don’t even seem capable of finding a trash can.

“It’s very simple,” said Ms. Ferguson.

“Your dog poops. You pick it up. You throw it in the garbage. If there’s no garbage immediately near you, you carry it to the next garbage that you see.”

Still, she tries hard to understand the psychology of the few serial offenders.

“It’s almost like they pick it up and they feel proud of themselves, and then they just don’t do that extra step. But because they’ve picked it up, there’s no guilt in leaving it.”

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